A U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week could clear the way for a lawsuit by three metro Atlanta counties alleging that predatory lending practices by mortage lenders cost them hundreds of millions in lost property taxes and higher expenses in blighted neighborhoods.
In a mixed ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court said cities can sue banks for alleged predatory lending practices that violate the Fair Housing Act, but the court left undecided how much harm the cities could claim.
The case, decided Monday, involved a lawsuit stemming from the 2008 financial crisis that the city of Miami filed against Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
In a similar case, Fulton, DeKalb and Cobb counties sued Bank of America, alleging that the bank and its subsidiaries, Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, steered borrowers into high-cost “subprime” mortgages, stripped them of their equity with high fees and interest charges, and drove them into foreclosure.
Atlanta firm Harris Penn Lowry filed the lawsuit on behalf of the metro Atlanta counties as well as a similar lawsuit against Wells Fargo by Cook County in the Chicago metro area. The Atlanta lawsuit, now being handled by Atlanta firm Evangelista Worley, was de;ayed pending the Supreme Court’s decision, according to that firm.
The Atlanta-area counties’ lawsuit said banks were partly responsible for the wave of tens of thousands of foreclosures that rocked the metro area, saddling local governments with huge economic costs. Local governments’ losses included lost tax revenues due to falling property values and the costs of dealing with vacant homes and higher crime in blighted areas.
However, some legal experts have said local governments may have a hard time proving that banks, rather than job losses during the Great Recession, were to blame for such problems.
The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the Supreme Court’s 5-3 decision for its recognition that cities can intervene to fight predatory mortgage lending in their neighborhoods.
“With this decision, the Supreme Court has acknowledged the crucial role of municipal governments in protecting residents’ rights,” said Dennis Parker, director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. “In housing and lending as in other areas, cities can and should serve as a bulwark against discrimination.”
A spokesman for Wells Fargo said the Supreme Court decision set “stringent standards” for proving harm. “It will be very difficult for Miami or any other municipality to show the required connection between the claimed damages and unsubstantiated allegations about our lending practices, which do not reflect how we operate in the communities we serve,” said Tom Goyda, with Wells Fargo.
Miami’s claims are “without merit,” a Bank of America spokesman said. “We will continue to defend our interests in this matter,” said Lawrence Grayson, with Bank of America.
Several cities have filed similar lawsuits against financial institutions, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore and Memphis.
In a 2012 settlement of the lawsuit by Memphis and Shelby County, Wells Fargo agreed to provide more than $400 million in loans and financial assistance to affected borrowers.
In the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday, the majority of justices said Miami had succeeded in establishing that it had the right to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo under the Fair Housing law, which prohibits discriminatory transactions.
But the court declined to rule on whether Miami had established that the banks’ actions had caused the financial harm that the city said it had suffered. Instead, the court referred the case back to the federal appeals court in Atlanta on that issue.
That court had earlier reversed a trial court’s dismissal of Miami’s lawsuit.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s four liberal-leaning justices in the majority opinion.
On the other hand, Justice Clarence Thomas and two other justices disagreed in a dissenting opinion, saying that nothing in the Fair Housing law suggested that “Congress was concerned about decreased property values, foreclosures and urban blight, much less about strains on municipal budgets that might follow.”
